You know what'd strike me as the most likely bit of the data storage goo to self-evolve?

The data preservation programming. What other bit has a vested interest in keeping it alive?

Also keep in mind that over the years they were likely exposed to many outside stimuli which'd erase data and have to be repaired. Perhaps some of the most crucial mutations happened to small bits, with less redundancy.

I've got a question about gravitic shielding in Schlockverse: My understanding is that in terms of gravy, the size of an annie-plant is most or all of what matters, as opposed to the number of plants. Does this extend to shielding as well? From this strip, we know that a much smaller plant can generate single-locus deflection of strength comparable to a much larger plant's unifield, and this strip suggests that this locus of deflection covers a small arc.

If I interpret that correctly, it seems to me that a cluster of small plants like those on the rebuild Athens could collectively provide shielding comparable in strength to the unifield of a plant significantly larger than any of the individual plants in the cluster. You could even pull some special tricks, like pulsing only parts of your shield at a time, keeping you covered in any arc you're not trying to see/shoot through at the moment.

If we assume annie plants can only be spherical, and that the output of a plant is directly proportional to it's volume, and that the energy requirements of maintaining a unifield shield of a given strength are directly proportional to the surface area of that shield (and to the square of the distance from the generator), it can be shown that a cluster of smaller plants will never be as good as a single larger plant. The cluster will occupy more volume than a single plant of equal output, due to inefficiencies in packing, and therefore have to project a shield further out from it's overall center of mass, which will provide less protection for the same wattage. Any economies of scale from larger plants or difficulties in coordinating the output of multiple plants would further exacerbate the problem.

Ability to pull off 'tricks' with gravy seems to be a function of the controlling intelligence, rather than the hardware.

That makes sense, though I do wonder whether a piecemeal shield would be workable with smaller plants distributed throughout the craft/installation/suit of armor - i.e., if you don't have room for one large plant, could you get by with a bunch of small ones wherever you can fit them? The fact that stuff like Odin-suits don't have shielding suggests that the answer is either "no" or "yes, but it's really expensive".

I get the impression that his suit could deflect incoming strikes from one, maybe two sources at a time, and then only because Haban could think fast enough to anticipate the attack in time to get a small-arc shield up. He didn't seem to have comprehensive shielding.

You know what'd strike me as the most likely bit of the data storage goo to self-evolve?

The data preservation programming. What other bit has a vested interest in keeping it alive?

Also keep in mind that over the years they were likely exposed to many outside stimuli which'd erase data and have to be repaired. Perhaps some of the most crucial mutations happened to small bits, with less redundancy.

Vested interest makes it sound as though there's a motive and concious action, as does the phrase self-evolve. Amorphs could have evolved from goo in much the same way carbon based life forms evolve.

We've seen with Schlock that at a subconscious level there is an instruction to reassemble following damage and that lost mass is lost memory. These two properties mean damage therefore carries a risk of mutations because not all the data (which includes programming) can be saved every time.

In addition to mutation, the simple instruction to recombine also allows for something similar to sexual reproduction. Goo from two devices would attempt to recombine both themselves and their data but would end up creating the next generation of goo. When that goo is damaged it may unable to successfully recombine and so another generation is created. Apply evolutionary pressures over several thousand generations and sentient life could emerge.

This method of evolution would explain Schlock's personality, until they developed the ability to create a new generation at will, the only way for proto-amorphs to multiply was for them to end up splattered over a large enough area for them to be unable to recombine. For amorphs a death wish is an evolutionary advantage.

I get the impression that his suit could deflect incoming strikes from one, maybe two sources at a time, and then only because Haban could think fast enough to anticipate the attack in time to get a small-arc shield up. He didn't seem to have comprehensive shielding.

Yep, Haban was fast enough to see people aiming. Ships are going to be dealing with dozens of incoming torpedoes, lasers, and gravy all controlled by another AI just as fast.

It just occured to me that a typical Neutron Star has a radius of about 10 - 12km and typically contain around 1.35 - 2 solar masses.

So the 10 km diameter annie plant on the Extortioners probably has just under an entire solar mass worth of neutronium in it, combined with all the other stuff i imagine they come close to a full solar mass.

On the upside, you'd need way less energy to keep the neutronium compressed when you have an entire solar mass worth of gravity helping you out, on the downside you're going to need a LOT of energy to ensure that you don't end up throwing entire star systems out of whack whenever you drift too close (not to mention the effects teraporting that much mass into a place would cause to the fabric space-time, i imagine an entire extra stellar mass suddenly appearing anywhere near anything would be one hell of a jerk.)

Don't forget, annie plants aren't just solid spheres of neutronium - they're a monomolecular shell around whatever machinery is involved in an annie plant, at the center of which is presumably contained a probably-spherical mass of neutronium fuel. We don't know what fraction of the volume of an annie plant is machinery, superstructure, buffer space, and anything else that's not fuel (nor even if this fraction is constant or dependent on the size of the plant).

One of the tecnologys I really like in Schlock mercenary is the very dangerous array.

A large number of very sensitive sensors spread over a large arc ,cordinateing their reception, allows a huge eye to be formed. The resolution depending on their spread, their number and their cordination.

If Keyvin thinks along these lines it will eventually be impossible to hide tactical data or historical information from the Toughs.

One of these days Kyvin will make a huge number of terripedos and array them in an arc a few lightyears away from any event in the past that he wishes to witness. this array will include its own AI and feature very high speed coordination.

This would allow the toughs to witness any historical event that ever occured in space to the limit of the arrays resolution. This would include knowing where anyone they might chase has headed off to , where all the bodies are buried and who was truly at fault for everything.

I imagine Petey will want one of these arrays too. The further back in time he wanted to see , the more he would need to make more and further widespread sensors, as a giant AI already Petey would gradually become the witness to everything.

Don't forget, annie plants aren't just solid spheres of neutronium - they're a monomolecular shell around whatever machinery is involved in an annie plant, at the center of which is presumably contained a probably-spherical mass of neutronium fuel. We don't know what fraction of the volume of an annie plant is machinery, superstructure, buffer space, and anything else that's not fuel (nor even if this fraction is constant or dependent on the size of the plant).

yes, but we know have the rough size and weight for at least one of them... assuming Oisri is an annie plant, and its admittedly not a typical one....

but we know it has a rough volume of 1/50 of earth, and 1.2 earth masses. The density of earth is about 5.5 times that of water, so Oisri's density is 330 times that of water. holy crap, that's a dense world. If the other annie's are that dense, they're insanely heavy. Of course, odds are that the weight really varies with fuel. Now we just need to figure out how much juice the thing has ... assuming its an annie.

_________________The sextuple-bladed lightsaber. With three double lightsabers connected at perpendicular angles, in three different colors mind you, it's the perfect tool for the deadliest game of jacks in the world. Now, there is a slight problem with it, that there's only one on/off switch in the center-either all the blades are on or all the blades are off-but that's no problem for a Jedi with skills in Force Levitation, right?

With the way the beachhead cage works you could pull that trick they used on Stargate SG1 where they used one as the muzzle of a super-weapon.

In fact, imagine if you could adapt the VDA to produce a beachhead cage effect. It would allow a ship to terraport out of a TAD field just by surrounding itself with its own missles.

Larry Niven used that idea in a short story. There was a proposal to use a self-teleporting ship inside a 1 km magnetic accelerator. Every time the ship reached the end, it teleported back to the beginning. With a one-gee boost for one year, it was able to come close to Cee, while leaving its motor at home. It was designed for rescuing a ram rocket that couldn't slow down. Boost the rescue ship to near-cee, let it rendezvous with hte other ship (using its teleport capability to reach the other ship, and return home to be decelearted.

_________________==============================================="A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."Arthur C. Clarke"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."Jack L. Chalker"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"Larry Niven"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it."Florence Ambrose

It occurs to me that the "Post-Transuranics" (PTU's) might not have normal nuclei. Perhaps they are "Dibaryonic" particles (hypothetical proton- and neutron-like particles made up of two of each Quark--theoretically possible, but beyond our current energy levels to try to create--hint, hint). From what I've read, such atoms might bond atom-to-atom via the strong nuclear force, and not only the electromagnetic force, and would be immensely stronger because of this. This would explain their immense strength, and their huge energy cost. It would also explain the fact that they are currently unknown. Dibaryonic particles would be extremely rare to begin with, and the odds of seeing anything more complex than Dibaryonic Hydrogen is vanishingly small. Hoping we'd find an atom of dibaryonic matter with an Atomic Number > 120, and a correspondingly high Atomic Mass is ridiculous. It puts me in mind of Douglas Adams' "probability" of 1/(∞-1). Such elements, if possible, will require particle accelerators several orders of magnitude more powerful than current models. Now imagine building atoms with 300 such particles, particle-by-particle, then aggregating these atoms to make a coherent structure using something like the LHC on steroids. This would consume a vast amount of wealth before even a small annie plant could be constructed, and then you'd need to make enough neutronium to fuel it. That would explain why technological societies without annie plants as loaners take "thousands of years" to make their first annie plant.

_________________==============================================="A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."Arthur C. Clarke"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."Jack L. Chalker"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"Larry Niven"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it."Florence Ambrose

Could one teraport a chunk of antimatter as a means of attacking through a TAD field? Antimatter still packs the same punch if it comes out the other end as mush, dust, or vapor.

Kevyn mentioned that one outcome of hitting an incomplete Teraport "packet" with a gravitic pulse would involve the packet collapsing into (IIRC) "high-order gravity waves." So; no; matter or antimatter, it doesn't matter.

_________________==============================================="A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."Arthur C. Clarke"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."Jack L. Chalker"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"Larry Niven"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it."Florence Ambrose

I wonder what'd happen if you fed one stargate through another stargate? Set the coordinates properly on them both and have the universe pull itself into its own hole?

My understanding is that Wormhole physics (the current theory) would not permit one singularity to enter a second intact; they should aggregate and you'd have serious trouble, especially if your wormholes were braided with exotic matter in order to permit something to pass through.

It's just like trying to move a wormhole FTL; it shouldn't work.

_________________==============================================="A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."Arthur C. Clarke"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."Jack L. Chalker"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"Larry Niven"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it."Florence Ambrose

If it was a real wormhole type effect you would expect to see the other side when the gate opened rather than the cool water effect, and have bi directional travel rather than the single direction that appears to exist.

I've always wondered about the entire "single directional" thing. I mean, if it's unidirectional, how come they can send the probe robot through and expect to get anything useful to come back, and why doesn't the room immediately start depressurizing the moment the gate is opened? If it's unidirectional, it would function as Maxwell's Demon, and result in all the air in the room blowing out. A gate opened out in the open would start sucking off the planet's atmosphere, and a gate opened at the bottom of the ocean would drain the ocean.

Both of these points were addressed more than once. The Stargates pass radio both ways; it's in the design, probably because the designers wanted to be able to communicate through the Stargates. As for atmosphere, the Stargates are designed specifically not to allow more than a tiny amount of air exchange between gates; again, this is by design, since planets don't have the same atmospheric pressure. Also, Stargates might be in vacuum or under water. The simple answer is that they were designed that way by the original Builders, and even Dr. Carter admitted she didn't understand everything about how the gates worked.

The main reason air doesn't leak or blast through the Stargates is "because." Because they were designed by highly-advanced people who were smart enough to design them NOT to do stupid things. You might as well ask "why don't people who walk through the Stargate take off in the direction of their last linear and angular momentum?" Because the builders weren't idiots, and the Stargates automatically translate one's linear and angular momentum so that you have precisely the same momenta in the new reference frame. Now "why do bullets and arrows travel through with lethal effect?" We learned that when we discovered that the Ancients built small spacecraft which can travel through the Stargate. There are good reasons one would want to be able to fly out of a Stargate at high velocity, although if one were to fly a Puddle-jumper through the Stargate at rifle velocities ( Mach 3-4), the compression wave would probably kill everyone near the 'Gate. That's not a bad thing if you know there may be hostiles on the other side. The same holds true for Staff blasts. "Because the designers built it that way" is really a very good explanation. If you want a better answer, Ascend and ask an Ancient.

_________________==============================================="A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."Arthur C. Clarke"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."Jack L. Chalker"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"Larry Niven"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it."Florence Ambrose

I recently discovered that "neutronium" has more than one meaning. The superdense material at the core of neutron stars is termed "neutron degenerate material," and is composed of neutrons, therefore it's neutronium. The same term can be applied to any material composed solely of neutrons, although only neutron-degenerate matter is "stable." Thus, when "neutronium" is discussed in the Schlockiverse, I presume the real meaning is "neutron-degenerate matter."

I also have a suggestion for why neutronium is usable in the cores of Annie-plants: neutronium can be put under more pressure, in which case it, apparently, turns into "quark matter" (as in quark stars), which is even denser. This state of matter obeys slightly different rules, and may be the form of matter which can decay directly to energy. A potential risk is to apply too much compression, and cause some of the neutronium to collapse to a singularity, which would probably eat the power plant, the crew, and the ship they rode in on. Thus, those civilizations which advanced to the point of experimenting with annie plants probably run their tests 'way far away from home.

_________________==============================================="A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."Arthur C. Clarke"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."Jack L. Chalker"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"Larry Niven"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it."Florence Ambrose

A potential risk is to apply too much compression, and cause some of the neutronium to collapse to a singularity, which would probably eat the power plant, the crew, and the ship they rode in on.

Would it really? I mean, it's the same mass you started with, so anything further away than the surface of the original ball of neutronium would experience the exact same gravitational forces regardless of how much it was compressed. At worst, a singularity's tidal forces would damage the inside of the power plant enough to stop any further compression, and then the glob would evaporate via Hawking radiation.

If it was a real wormhole type effect you would expect to see the other side when the gate opened rather than the cool water effect, and have bi directional travel rather than the single direction that appears to exist.

I've always wondered about the entire "single directional" thing. I mean, if it's unidirectional, how come they can send the probe robot through and expect to get anything useful to come back, and why doesn't the room immediately start depressurizing the moment the gate is opened? If it's unidirectional, it would function as Maxwell's Demon, and result in all the air in the room blowing out. A gate opened out in the open would start sucking off the planet's atmosphere, and a gate opened at the bottom of the ocean would drain the ocean.

Both of these points were addressed more than once. The Stargates pass radio both ways; it's in the design, probably because the designers wanted to be able to communicate through the Stargates. As for atmosphere, the Stargates are designed specifically not to allow more than a tiny amount of air exchange between gates; again, this is by design, since planets don't have the same atmospheric pressure. Also, Stargates might be in vacuum or under water. The simple answer is that they were designed that way by the original Builders, and even Dr. Carter admitted she didn't understand everything about how the gates worked.

The main reason air doesn't leak or blast through the Stargates is "because." Because they were designed by highly-advanced people who were smart enough to design them NOT to do stupid things. You might as well ask "why don't people who walk through the Stargate take off in the direction of their last linear and angular momentum?" Because the builders weren't idiots, and the Stargates automatically translate one's linear and angular momentum so that you have precisely the same momenta in the new reference frame. Now "why do bullets and arrows travel through with lethal effect?" We learned that when we discovered that the Ancients built small spacecraft which can travel through the Stargate. There are good reasons one would want to be able to fly out of a Stargate at high velocity, although if one were to fly a Puddle-jumper through the Stargate at rifle velocities ( Mach 3-4), the compression wave would probably kill everyone near the 'Gate. That's not a bad thing if you know there may be hostiles on the other side. The same holds true for Staff blasts. "Because the designers built it that way" is really a very good explanation. If you want a better answer, Ascend and ask an Ancient.

Making travel one-way at a time makes sense as a built-in safety feature. Imagine what would happen if two people were trying to enter and exit at the same time. The stargates are designed to be pretty much as idiot-proof as possible and keep you from doing stupid things by accident. The main reason Earth was able to get into so much trouble with theirs was because all the control systems were jury-rigged with human tech instead of using the ancient-built input devices like all the other gates.

You see, gates don't send partial objects. Its perfectly safe to stick your arm into either gate(as long as its the front of the gate). The gate has a 'buffer', and anything that passes the gate goes into the buffer. Once a whole object is in the buffer, it tries to send it to the other gate. If that gate is the gate that dialed, well... no one is sure exactly what happens, but you don't walk out the other side. If you remain in the buffer of the first gate and aren't sent, or if you are sent and the other gate either stores you in its buffer or just 'discards' you, is never elaborated on.

All I've heard of entering the back of a gate is the result is 'messy'.

I have a question. How did amorphs evolve from memory storage devices?

Evolution by natural selection requires that there be a replicator, which has a less than perfect copying fidelity. Errors in the copying process are mutations, these are random but the mutations are selected (naturally) depending on their utility for the survival and continued propagation of that particular replicator in that particular environment.

In all life on earth these replicators are the DNA (or RNA in viruses) that make up our genetic code. For about 3.5 billion years all life on earth consisted of single celled organisms, until the Cambrian explosion 500m years ago in which multicellular organisms appeared. Each cell in those organisms are all clones to serve the interests of the same replicator, though there would be symbiotes and parasites in there too, over time becoming seamlessly melded with the replicators of the original host. So a multicellular organism would be a kind of colony for replicators of many different origins, over time.

When it's time to reproduce a multicellular organism the germ cell is created with a random mixture of half of the genetic information from the previous cell through the process of meiosis, from which a new organism is constructed after fertilizing another such germ cell.

So what would serve the role of the replicator in a long term carbo-silicate storage device? And how would there be enough selection pressure to drive the process of blind selection to take it from a jar of goo to a sentient being like schlock which. Also once reaching that state apparantly stops evolving in a physical way altogether, according to schlock's talk about the birds and the bees, his species doesn't exchange codes for gross physical structure, only personality information.

Also I'm wondering, if life forms in the galaxy use the same kinds of replicators as us and the same amino acids as we do, how do different species stop their immune systems from being completely overwhelmed by trillions of previously unencountered species of bacteria upon setting foot on another world, ala War of the Worlds?

Actually, nanotech might be the easy answer to that last one...

The Amorphs arose from self-replicating memory units. I have posited earlier that these memory devices replaced failing units by eating them and replicating their data. Hence, Amorph meme-sharing and auto-immune combat. After the fall of the cities, there was nobody around to monitor the memory devices, which started failing and being replaced. Pollutants in the environment caused mutation in the children. Given how hostile the environment was, only the strongest survived. Logically, the best way to power such memory devices would be by feeding them any unnecessary materials, AKA garbage. Viola--memory units which recycle your garbage, too.

_________________==============================================="A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."Arthur C. Clarke"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."Jack L. Chalker"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"Larry Niven"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it."Florence Ambrose

You see, gates don't send partial objects. Its perfectly safe to stick your arm into either gate(as long as its the front of the gate). The gate has a 'buffer', and anything that passes the gate goes into the buffer. Once a whole object is in the buffer, it tries to send it to the other gate. If that gate is the gate that dialed, well... no one is sure exactly what happens, but you don't walk out the other side. If you remain in the buffer of the first gate and aren't sent, or if you are sent and the other gate either stores you in its buffer or just 'discards' you, is never elaborated on.

All I've heard of entering the back of a gate is the result is 'messy'.

Except that Samantha expressly stated that wormholes are one-way, and the theory I've read implies that wormholes designed to transfer matter and energy have to be constructed as one-way, because of the direction the gravitational flux needs to flow. It's amazing how much we know about something we aren't even sure how to build.

_________________==============================================="A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."Arthur C. Clarke"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."Jack L. Chalker"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"Larry Niven"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it."Florence Ambrose

I have a science question. Both Luna and Earth are depicted as having ring systems* (presumably of 'junk' ... a subject itself of some interest to me), but Luna also has a beanstalk (space elevator). I know that Luna's beanstalk is smaller than (for instance) the wikipedia page would suggest, since its rotation was sped up.

I thought I'd seen some math about where the ring system would be, but I've displaced it (must be in my ... other jeans ... ) and I was under the impression the rings would be closer to the planet than the geostationary orbit is.

What is the interaction between the beanstalk and the ring system? My limited understanding of maths would indicate that if they are both centred on Luna then rotation will carry the beanstalk through the 'geometric plane' of the rings.**

If the ring(s?) is further out than the beanstalk, that would also solve the problem of collisions.

*They do seem to come and go though, should I just assume that they're not really visible when seen edge on? Even at a couple of miles wide they wouldn't be even a pixel width at the scale we see for instance when Earth and Luna are both entirely within the shot.**This assumes that the 'plane of the ring' is not necessarily the same as the 'plane of the moon's equator', which seems safe-ish given that they are both artificial, and further assumes the beanstalk is at the equator***, and thus its rotation also forms a plane, and Euclidian geometry is enough to tell us the two planes will intersect unless they are parallel.***Is this assumption wrong? Could a beanstalk also work from say, one of the poles?********I've checked the additional bonus material in my print copy of the first book*****, and both Nectaris city and the Hellevator are on the new equator, but it's an interesting question anyway. You save energy by being on the equator, but the quotes regarding terraforming indicate that energy is really cheap from the 22nd century onwards.*****Look how smooth that plug was, smooth I tell you.